Garbage collection will be done every two weeks throughout the Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve borough by 2024.
The mayor of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve announced in a press release on Wednesday that household waste collection will be done every two weeks throughout the borough by 2024.
“Each year, the Agglomeration of Montreal sends enough waste to landfill sites to fill the Olympic Stadium twice,” lamented Emmanuel Rondia, director general of the Regional Council for the Environment of Montreal. It’s huge when you know that 85% of the materials that end up in our garbage bags could be recovered by another type of collection.
The borough will set up a cleanliness plan and an advisory committee to oversee the implementation of the measure. Food waste collection will also be offered in all buildings where it is not already offered.
The spacing of the collection should allow “better individual management of residual materials” and encourage the population “to participate in the effort to collect organic materials” so that they are reused.
The spacing of household waste collection has already been studied for several months in two sectors of the borough.
“The rate of participation in composting observed in the pilot sectors has jumped to 55%, while it is 36% in the neighboring sector which is not participating in the pilot project”, indicated Pierre Lessard-Blais, the mayor of Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.
As a reminder, emissions from the waste sector, excluding their transport, constitute the fifth largest generator of greenhouse gases (GHG).